When comparing PyCharm vs Kdevelop with kdev-python, the Slant community recommends PyCharm for most people. In the question“What are the best Python IDEs or editors?”PyCharm is ranked 1st while Kdevelop with kdev-python is ranked 11th. The most important reason people chose PyCharm is:

Pros

Pro

Version control integration

Pro

Catches run-time information when running the code

PyCharm can leverage run-time information when running your application with the built-in debugger to figure out what types can possibly be passed to which functions, etc.

Pro

One of the best autocompletion engines around

PyCharm has two types of autocompletion: structural completion and word expansion.

Structural autocompletion makes predictions based on its understanding of Python and JavaScript objects, while the latter tries to predict the word currently being typed based on previously typed words. Word expansion also works in comments and docstrings and it's similar to vim's omnicompletion.

Both types of autocompletion work extremely well, have little to no problems and are quite fast even when loading suggestions on the go.

Pro

Free version available

There's a community edition (with limited features) that's free to use. You can also get a 30-day trial of the Professional edition.

Pro

Great pip support

PyCharm offers great pip integration. When opening a project it automatically checks for a requirements.txt file in the root of the project. If it's found, it checks if all the libraries are available in the interpreter. If one or more libraries are missing, it issues a warning and asks whether you want to install any missing libraries.

Pro

Excellent refactoring support

There are many refactoring options including renaming and changing signature across entire projects. It also includes the an ability to preview changes before committing and exclude anything unwanted.

Pro

Great for navigating large codebases

PyCharm has amazing code navigation implementations. It supports both goto symbol and goto declaration. The former finds classes, variables, functions, etc by name. While the latter is used by moving the cursor on top of a symbol and by using the mouse or a keyboard combination it finds the declaration of that symbol and takes you there.

Both of these features are extremely helpful when consulting large code-bases and when trying to understand an API written by someone else.

Pro

Automatically figures out what test to run based on the method the cursor rests at a given time

PyCharm, based on what method or class the cursor rests, can figure out what tests to run and perform them with a keyboard shortcut or two, without breaking up the flow and need to switch to a command line interface.

Pro

Supports installing third party libraries

No need to go to the command line to download a new package, PyCharm has an easy system to browse, download, and update third party packages.

Pro

Excellent integration with debugging tools

All the debugging can be done inside the IDE. Breakpoints in the code can be added using keyboard shortcuts or the mouse. When the code is executed through the debugger a toolbar pops up with all the relevant context needed for the debugging process.

The whole process is smooth and painless and you don't even have to switch windows to do the debugging.

Pro

Sophisticated static analysis tools

Pro

Free student access to Professional Edition

With a valid .edu address students can register to use the Professional edition and enjoy all the perks of the full paid version for free.

Though it should be mentioned that the with the free student acess you cannot use PyCharm for any commercial purposes, even accepting donations for an open source project.

Pro

Easy to optimize code with built-in profiling tools

If you have a yappi profiler installed on your interpreter, PyCharm starts the profiling session with it by default, otherwise it uses the standard cProfile profiler.

Pro

Has a lot of plugins

PyCharm offers a high variety of plugins like Pylin, Mypy etc. covering all the above mentioned. Plus it has a built-in support to detect wrong formatted/named things (inspection).

Pro

Amazing direct database integration

Pycharm supports SQLlite, PostgresQL, Mysql, etc out of the box and is integrated very nicely with Pycharm. Making database modifications could never have been easier as changing a cell value and committing the changes straight from pycharm.

Pro

Real-time static analysis

Kdevelop has a pretty powerful and sophisticated implementation of static analysis for Python. It's capable of pretty good type inference, tracking types and the expected groking of inheritance trees.

Pro

Best Vim bindings in an IDE

Most IDEs have very limited vim bindings, but KDevelop runs on the Kate editor. Kate is one of the most robust editors in the Linux world and is subsequently very functional. The Vim bindings are very close to complete with very few holes.

Pro

Excellent syntax highlighting

Kdevelop has very smart syntax and semantic syntax highlighting.

Pro

Blazingly fast

PyCharm is amazing and easily the most feature option out there. But KDevelop is faster and has all the features needed for python develop. Opening new files, moving from file to file, code and syntax checks, everything happens instantly.In the end the speed is what won me over to use KDevelop, when code is in my mind I don't want to wait on my IDE.

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Cons

Con

Very high memory usage

Memory usage is usually anywhere around 1-2GB and possibly larger with larger projects

Con

Vim mode is limited

Con

Not suitable to edit project's files written in other languages

There is a high variety of support for a lot of languages like markdown etc. Not for Java and so on, but it is a Python IDE.

Con

Odd Autosave "feature", can't be disabled fully

PyCharm automatically saves your files for you, always, without telling you. You can't disable this. There's a way to indicate if a file has been modified via an indicator in the tab (not enabled by default - why?).

If you exit it won't ask you if you want to save the modified file. Totally unintuitive and contrary to all other established workflows. It's ok to try something new, but give users the option to have the "normal" behaviour of any other IDE/editor out there. Can be a deal breaker for those that need to know/have control over when they save their files. (PyCharm offers a history to undo the automatic save, but why force a user to undo something with extra steps that shouldn't have happened in the first place?)

Con

Works with no problems only on Linux

KDevelop is an IDE for the KDE platform. Even though it's cross-platform, it's mostly targeted at Linux systems and the versions for other operating systems are highly experimental.

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